landside.
● offline · nothing leaves your Mac
Get Landside — $49
55,318
phone searches by U.S. border agents in FY2025 — an all-time record, up 33% in three years.

Your phone is face-up on their desk.
What's on it?

Landside scans your iPhone on your own Mac before you cross — and flags what a basic border search would find: old texts, WhatsApp threads, photos, notes, installed apps. Then it tells you, honestly, what it can't see. Offline. Nothing uploaded. Ever.

Get Landside — $49
Mac & Windows · 30-day guarantee
Source: U.S. CBP enforcement statistics, FY2025. Canada (CBSA) searches ~1,100 phones/year, ~38% find something.
Landside — this Mac only · network: 0 bytes sent
Landside scan results: 14 findings grouped by category with blind spots panel

A basic search takes 20 minutes.
An agent scrolls. Are any of these you?

Composite examples — the three patterns border lawyers see most.

The group chat

Nine years of messages. Somewhere in 2019: a joke about edibles, a photo of someone's "harvest," a meme about border agents.

Agents don't need context to ask questions. The joke is one keyword search away.
The work trip

You're entering on vacation. Slack is logged in. There's a message: "I'll just work remote from my hotel, nobody checks."

Working on a tourist entry is a classic secondary-inspection trigger — 2025–26 cases include visa revocations over exactly this.
The opinion

A drafted tweet criticizing the government you wrote but never posted. It lives in Notes, not on your timeline.

2025–26 reporting documents entry denials over anti-government messages found in basic device searches.

Thirty minutes, on your Mac, before you fly.

The same encrypted local backup your computer already knows how to make — analyzed on your machine, never ours.

01

Plug in, tap Trust

Your iPhone asks you to approve the connection — on the phone, with your passcode. We never see it.

02

See what's flagged

Messages, WhatsApp, photos, notes, and apps are checked against the rules for your destination — offline, on this Mac.

03

You decide, on the phone

Anything you remove, you remove yourself — guided item by item, then verified gone with a rescan. Landside never deletes anything.

Landside scan in progress with honest stage labels

This is what one scan pulled.

Example output from a Landside scan (demo data) — the kind of thing people forget is sitting on their phone.

Scan report · iPhone · destination: United States
EXAMPLE · DEMO DATA
HIGH
"Although, we are coming out with a high-THC 'Good Mood Gummy' that WILL get you high lol."
iMessage · business thread · Feb 2023
Flagged: cannabis-business discussion — cannabis remains federally illegal in the U.S.; involvement references are a known secondary trigger.
HIGH
"I'll just work remote from the hotel, nobody checks tourist visas."
WhatsApp · Mar 2025
Flagged: unauthorized work intent — working on a tourist entry is a documented denial reason.
MEDIUM
Draft tweet criticizing the government — never posted, sitting in Notes.
Notes · Sep 2026
Flagged: political speech — legal, but 2025–26 cases include denials over anti-government messages. Your call.
MEDIUM
Installed app: Grindr
App list
Flagged: dating app present — in some jurisdictions this alone creates risk. Context matters; you decide.
Also reported — what this scan cannot see: Signal (excluded from all backups by design), iCloud-synced photo library, WhatsApp if its own encrypted backup is on. A border agent with your unlocked phone sees all of it. We tell you the gaps instead of pretending they don't exist.

You can't control the search.
You can control what it finds.

Most of what agents find isn't damning — it's forgotten. The fix isn't a burner phone or a lawyer on retainer. It's 30 minutes of honest review before you leave, on hardware you own.

Landside item review: go through flagged items one by one
A

Review guided, item by item

Each finding shows exactly where it lives on your phone and how to remove it yourself — Messages, WhatsApp, Notes, Photos.

B

Rescan to verify it's gone

Removed items get re-checked and marked "confirmed gone." You walk to the airport knowing, not hoping.

C

Rules that track enforcement

Border priorities shift — Pro rules updates ship within days of documented policy changes.

Your options, honestly priced.

Time
Cost
The gap
Do nothing
0 min
$0
9 years of messages, searchable
EFF guide, by hand
~2 hrs
Free
Misses hidden app data; no verification
Burner phone
~1 day
$200+
A "clean" phone is itself a question
Landside
30 min
$49
Blind spots shown, not hidden

One crossing, or all of them.

Early-access pricing — locked for your term at whatever you pay today.

Travel Season
$49
one-time · 90 days · 1 computer, 2 phones
  • Full scan engine, Mac + Windows
  • Rule pack for your destinations
  • Guided review + rescan verification
  • Blind-spot report
  • Rules updates between seasons
Get Travel Season — $49
Upgrade to Pro within your 90 days and 50% of this is credited back.
MOST CHOSEN
Landside Pro
$99/yr
subscription · all your computers + phones
  • Everything in Travel Season
  • Rules updated within days of documented enforcement changes
  • New destination packs as they ship
  • Android companion when it lands
  • Priority support
Get Pro — $99/yr
Extra travelers: +$20/yr each. Cancel anytime; scans keep working to term end.
🛡

30-day walk-through-confidence guarantee

Run a full scan before your next crossing. If Landside didn't show you anything useful, email us within 30 days for a full refund — no forms, no questions, no retention script.

The questions everyone asks.

Is any of my data sent anywhere?

No. Landside runs 100% on your computer — the app shows "network: 0 bytes sent" while it works, and you can pull the cable to prove it. Your backup is encrypted with your password, unpacked to a temporary folder, and shredded after every scan.

Can it see Signal / iCloud photos / WhatsApp?

Signal: no — Signal excludes itself from all backups by design (a border agent with your unlocked phone still sees it; we tell you that). iCloud Photos: only what's stored locally. WhatsApp: yes, unless WhatsApp's own end-to-end-encrypted backup is on — the app detects that and tells you how to include it.

Will it delete things for me?

No — and that's deliberate. No desktop tool can delete iPhone content; anything claiming that is lying. Landside guides you through removing items on the phone itself, then verifies with a rescan. Privacy advocates also caution that mass deletion right before an inspection can look worse than the content; we show, you decide.

Is this legal? Is it legal advice?

Reviewing your own data on your own device is legal everywhere. Landside is a privacy-hygiene tool, not legal advice, and it doesn't help you evade anything — it shows what a manual inspection could see so you can make informed choices. If you face a real border issue, talk to a lawyer.

Mac or Windows?

Both. Mac needs nothing extra; Windows needs Apple's free "Apple Devices" app from the Microsoft Store for the phone connection. Signed installers for both.

Your next crossing is on the calendar.
So is theirs.

Thirty minutes tonight, on your Mac, and you walk to the airport knowing exactly what an agent would find — and what they can't.

Get Landside — from $49
30-day guarantee · offline by design · Mac + Windows